Read Elliot Diringer’s article in Nature on the potential path forward for international climate talks. Below is a brief summary.

With the failure in recent years of international attempts to deliver a binding treaty on emissions reductions, individual countries are finding their own ways to address the issue.

This patchwork approach could work for climate-change mitigation, C2ES Executive Vice President Elliot Diringer says in Nature, but we need an overarching framework of rules by which progress can be measured.

“Much of the real work to stave off climate catastrophe must happen at home,” Diringer writes. There are encouraging signs for reaching a new international agreement, but nations are still struggling with how to build ambition into the model, to ensure that collective action does reduce global emissions overall.

Diringer writes that home-made national approaches can be effective for climate-change mitigation if countries agree on rules and build trust.